Though, whether his persona is genuine or not, his appeal was undeniable. Music blogs gushed over him. And people were fascinated by the face-tattooed kid from Kendall. To this day, our profile on Stitches continues to be one of our most-read articles.

Or, even more recently, like when his provocations last month garnered a reply from none other than the beef master himself – The Game. Stitches questioned the legitimacy of Game’s affiliation with the Blood gang before posting a screenshot of a direct message between the two rappers. The Game claimed the direct message was faked but stooped nonetheless to reply on Instagram with a diss of his own.

But all this sizzling beef has overshadowed what could potentially be the biggest piece of news to emerge about Stitches in the past year: that may be battling cancer. In April, the rapper released a freestyle titled “Fuck the Police” in which he closes with the lines:

And now I got cancer so just know I do not care/The next time that them pussy pigs run up they dying right there.

The next day @therealstitches began retweeting fan after fan wishing him the best and cancer the worst.

(To be sure, a handful of twitter handles claim to be the real Stitches, and though @therealstitches has the most followers we couldn’t verify the account with Stitches himself. Emails to Stitches requesting a comment also went unreturned.)

About six months ago, Stitches took to Instagram to talk about his disease. In the description of one of his Instagrams of a photo that simply read "Fuck Cancer" he had this to say:

For everybody asking .Yes it is true I am having a few issues with my health.But ima always be good.Beleive that#fuckcancer #fuckajob #tmigang click the link in my bio to hear new song . When they diagnose you with this type of bullshit it makes you just stop giving a fuck about the pointless shit you usually care about like cars,jewls and all that other fancy shit don't matter when your gone . It's about family.#mykids#tmigang

A video posted by TMI GANG #FUCKAJOB (@stitches) on May 12, 2015 at 9:47am PDT

"Nigga, I ain't got cancer no more!" he screams in the front seat of his car. "I took that shit out my neck. Stitches gonna live forever, man."

He then cuts to show two pills on his tongue, what his Instagram description indicates are Percocet, before adding, "And I'm driving faded!"

Dyllan Furness is Miami New Times' "foreign" correspondent. After earning a degree in philosophy from the University of Florida, he crossed the pond and dove into music, science, and technology from Berlin.